


Shifting Tides

by thatstarlitsky



Series: Beneath an Infinite Sky [2]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Civilian San, Cop Mingi, Dome Cities on Mars, Gen, Mars, Martian Police Force, Mingi is pining, Racing Speeders, Sangi is platonic, Sangi strangers to friends, Space Pirates, YunGi is in a long distance friendship, very long distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22241122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatstarlitsky/pseuds/thatstarlitsky
Summary: Officer Song Mingi is one of a handful of sentry officers sent beyond the domes to keep pirates from using the uninhabited, Martian landscape to hide their criminal activities. While he’s detained three over the last few years, it’s his first time pulling over some upstart brat for racing his speeder where it didn’t belong.
Relationships: Choi San & Song Mingi
Series: Beneath an Infinite Sky [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1584877
Comments: 23
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is Part 2 of my series Beneath an Infinite Sky. You don’t need to read Eyes Like Stars for this to make sense, but the stories are all part of the same universe (in this case, the same solar system) and they do canonically connect, so I very much recommend you do. For those of you wanting more SeongJoong, I’ve got more coming later, but for now, here’s a story about Officer Song Mingi, the man who spent his spare time looking after Hongjoong’s ship while it was impounded.  
I studied Mars within an inch of my life for this fic. It’s a fascinating planet, and if you have the time, you should absolutely read up on NASA’s research (god bless you NASA I couldn’t have done this without you).  
Enjoy!
> 
> P.S. Temperatures are in Celsius because I’m Canadian. To those of you who don’t know, 0 Celsius is the freezing point, and 100 Celsius is the boiling point. Human core temperature is 36 Celsius on average. Room temperature is 15 C– 25 C depending on how hot you like your house.

Six hours and thirty-two minutes to go.

Mingi lounged in the cockpit of his police-marked Landstrider, sipping on a bottle of water, and slowly eating his way through his daily rations. He knew he should save them for when he was _actually_ hungry, and not drink too much while sitting out in a place he couldn’t use an actual toilet, but on days like today, he was over it. Sentry duty was disgustingly boring – even duller than paperwork, and Mingi hated that too.

He pressed another vegetable crisp into his mouth, feeling the salt dissolve over his tongue as he chewed. The bitter aftertaste of vitamin additives crawled to the back of his throat, forcing him to take another drink to wash it down. He grimaced, and wished he had something to _look_ at to curb the boredom; or that he’d received a night shift instead. At least he’d be able to watch the stars when he wasn’t running his scanners in search of movement.

The only feature worth looking at was the distant peak of Olympus Mons, and the rolling ridges of the Tharsis volcano chain. If he dared change his angle, he would see the tip of the Tharsis Dome on the other side of the hills, the smaller sibling of the Olympus Dome, but equally as cozy. Mingi sometimes envied the geothermal power that warmed the volcanic cities enough for tropical plants to thrive in their bountiful gardens, but Marineris’s temperate environment had always been comfortable for him.

Above the mountains, the Martian sky was painted a dull terracotta that complimented the monotonous, rusty stones that texturized the otherwise bland surface of the planet. Where the sun lingered in the sky, a tiny pinprick of light smaller than his thumbnail at arms length, the faintest trickles of murky blue hinted of greater things. Mingi had heard stories of Earth; of skies that glowed a blue so brilliant, people had named a crayon after it. He had a pen pal on Earth, a man roughly his age named Jeong Yunho, and though he insisted the photos were real, Mingi was still convinced they’d been edited. When his sky was rarely free of dust, it was hard to imagine pure white clouds painted over an impossible shade of blue. Some days, he wished it were different – that the generations of attempts to terraform Mars had successfully grown an atmosphere thick enough to sustain not only life, but to refract the sun’s light into that titular shade of azure. Instead, he and the rest of the Martian people were forced to squeeze into hemisphere bubbles and hide from the solar radiation that had stripped their atmosphere in the first place. A lack of magnetosphere made life difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. And humanity _loved_ challenges. Mars’s seven dome cities and twenty-three farming bubbles was proof of that.

Mingi crinkled the wrapper of his vegetables crisps and used a twist tie to keep it closed. He stuffed it into the small drawer next to the helm with the other three packages he’d brought with him and tried not to fidget. Six hours and twenty-five minutes to go. Today’s shift would probably be just as uneventful as the last one – and the one before that. Mingi resisted the urge to close his eyes. The caffeine pills he’d swallowed before starting his shift would keep him from napping, but he could think wistfully of dropping several hours into the void instead of searching for a whole lot of nothing. But of course, he wasn’t the only one who thought that way. It was because of officers like him napping on the job that the pills had become mandatory. Too many missed arrest opportunities. Too many officers going missing for weeks or never coming back. Too many demoted force members and reputation-scarring writeups. Too much vicious media attention. The Martian Police Force had put their foot down. Enough was enough. Mingi just wished they had come up with a pill that countered the jittery, chest lurching feeling he got when the pills finally kicked in. Fidgeting could get exhausting faster than a monochrome red landscape.

Four hours in, and five hours and forty-seven minutes to go. Mingi’s cockpit motion tracker blipped an alert. _Dust disturbance_, it signalled. Mingi sighed and checked the local weather. Winds, fifteen kilometers an hour – outside temperature, -47 Celsius; the peak of spring on Mars.

Impatiently, Mingi reached for the alert to swipe it away. It was probably another budding dust devil, after all – that was all it ever was. But even as he doubted the thought, the disturbance wasn’t behaving in a manner that suggested a minor atmospheric event. The deep red of the dust was rising like a plume of smoke, kicked up and swirling like glitter in a snow globe.

The cockpit tracker pinged just as a silver object rounded a large boulder. Mingi pursed his lips, watching the speeder whip into a slalom, the bright blue exhaust plume kicking up red dust and sending it spiralling through superheated air. It only took another moment for Mingi to lose visual, but his RADAR tracker was pinging the location onto the cockpit window’s integrated HUD. Mingi flipped three switches; exhaust chute, ignition, landing gear. He gripped the helm and thrust it forwards.

The Landstrider was a hovercraft class speeder designed for low altitude transportation. It’s wedge-like design reduced drag, and the curved edges made it cut through the thin Martian atmosphere as easily as a shuttle shot through vacuum. It had a top speed of one-hundred and eighty kilometers per hour – more than enough for a police cruiser. Mingi edged it up to one-hundred and thirty, blasting through the dust cloud and catching sight of the rogue speeder once more. His display clocked it at two-hundred and seven. Mingi flipped another switch, this one on his steering wheel, and painted a LADAR target over the speeder’s body. He had a pair of railguns strapped to either side of his cruiser, but he prayed he wouldn’t have to use them. He set them to ‘disable’ and broadcasted the standard police warning. Mingi watched a copy of his message float at the corner of his display, red and blue lights flashing viciously across the screen.

_By order of the Martian Police Force, pull over and cease vehicle operation. Failure to comply will result in disciplinary action. This cruiser is armed. By order of the Martian Police..._

Mingi let out a soft sigh as he watched the speeder’s velocity drop; two-hundred kilometers; one hundred and fifty kilometers; ninety... Mingi caught up and pulled up beside it. He let out a low whistle. It was a Cormorant hovercraft, model 6.0 if his eyes weren’t deceiving him. It was painted a vivid silver and the word _Synergy_ was painted in elegant script beneath the chrome plated logo. It was a luxury speeder; a rich folk’s sport vehicle meant for showing off on long drives between cities, or apparently romping in the middle of bumfuck nowhere – which, as far as Mingi was concerned, was _everywhere_ on Mars that wasn’t inside of a dome. He couldn’t see the pilot through the heavily tinted UV filtering windows, but he imagined his cruiser was being checked out as well.

As the Cormorant slid to a stop, the landing gear deployed and automatically adjusted for the terrain. Mingi deployed his own, listening to the comforting _clunk_ of Martian stone beneath his cruiser. It wasn’t half as stable as the Cormorant’s autodock system, but it did the job. He opened up the communication channel and requested a video connection. The stranger accepted it after a few seconds. The video feed blocked out the dull surface of Mars and replaced it with a face he’d seen before, if only briefly. The Landstrider’s facial recognition software recalled his name long before Mingi did.

This wasn’t his first time being caught out here. The last time had been three month’s ago. His hair had changed since then, going from black streaked with red to black with a single, perfectly white streak in his bangs. The software took a screenshot and dumped it into the system, adding to the young man’s record. Mingi hoped for his sake that it would be the last entry for a long time.

“Choi San, is it?” Mingi asked, raising an eyebrow. “We let you off with a warning last time, didn’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Choi San replied, apparently doing his damndest to look sorry. Mingi wasn’t fooled. The man’s eyes were still wild with adrenaline. He _enjoyed_ using scattered Martian boulders as an obstacle course.

That didn’t make it any less illegal.

“Anyone else onboard your ship?”

“No, sir.”

“Why don’t we head back to Marineris, and we can talk about this?” Mingi suggested, rather than bluntly ordering the kid around. Going back to Marineris would get San out of his speeder, and get Mingi out of the bland landscape for an hour.

“Yes, sir,” San agreed.

Mingi nodded and killed the connection, igniting his engine once more. He spun his cruiser around and started a leisurely pace back towards the Marineris Dome. He was far enough away from it that it had disappeared over the horizon, but he was certain that if the sun wasn’t rising high-noon, the glow from the lights would be visible thanks to the ever-present dust particles in the atmosphere.

San’s Cormorant was following beside him, looking dejected now that it was forced to drive well below its top speed. It still looked far more elegant than Mingi’s cruiser. Despite his love for the Landstriders built for the force, they felt clunky and looked bricklike next to the graceful designs of luxury speeders. Mingi only could only dream of owning something as nice as a Cormorant. He didn’t even have a personal hovercraft outside of his cruiser – he had to take one of the subsurface tube trains if he wanted to go to another Martian city, or a taxi shuttle if he felt like indulging in a panoramic view of the landscape he saw twice a week just to get paid.

What Mingi really wanted was a starship. But he’d given up on that dream since he was old enough to understand economics. Instead, he indulged himself in fantasies, and used his off hours every once in awhile to say hello to a beautiful Nautilus tucked away in the impound center. The officers had yet to tell him who the owner was, only that she’d been brought in for illegal modifications and stripped to the bare bones before being put back together at the owners’ expense. The fees had apparently been _gladly_ paid. Mingi couldn’t imagine having that kind of money, but it didn’t stop him from trying. Reality may have stolen his dreams and tore them to pieces, but deep down, Mingi’s heart still wished, and the impounded Nautilus left him feeling full after every visit. He decided he’d go see her tonight – just to give himself a little something to look forward to.

Mingi let out an audible sigh as the Marineris Dome poked up over the horizon. It sat like the cross-section of a snow globe, with towering buildings at its center, the rooftops sloping down towards the outer edges of the dome. Mingi’s apartment was a few blocks from the fences that kept citizens from getting too close to where the dome plunged into the Martian earth and out of sight. Before he’d been promoted to exterior sentry duty, he’d patrolled similar streets to his own and dealt with many young teenagers seeking solace behind those fences. The Martian Police Force couldn’t keep them all out, but they could certainly try.

Mingi pinged a connection into the Marineris Police hangar, announcing his approach.

“Hangar three, this is Officer Song Mingi, badge 37752, requesting entry to escort Choi San, pilot of Cormorant, model 6.0, detained for stunt driving out near Tharsis.”

A moment of silence answered him, but he maintained a steady course towards the hangar. He glanced out his cockpit window to make sure that, yes, the Cormorant was still following at his side. Choi San might’ve been wild, but he had respect for authority.

“Copy, Officer Song. Entry granted. Proceed to gate two,” the woman manning the hangar replied.

The airlock swung open as Mingi steered his ship towards it. The Cormorant followed easily, maneuvered into place with an unexpected grace. Choi San could certainly drive. Mingi wanted to envy such a skill, but he figured the pilot must’ve had a lot of practice – perhaps in a lot more places Mingi knew about.

The airlock cycled closed, and Mingi waited for the hangar’s environmental systems to purge the dust and toxic air and pump in fresh oxygen. It only took a handful of minutes for the external temperature to reach a balmy twenty degrees Celsius and for the atmosphere to become breathable. The green light flashed on his cockpit door, and Mingi twisted the lock and pushed it open. A few feet away, Choi San was sliding out of his Cormorant. He pressed a button on the side of the ship to shut the door. His dark eyes darted towards Mingi for a moment before making a conscious effort to look everywhere _but_ him.

Mingi straightened his uniform and walked to meet him. “Do you have your vehicle registration and your ID?”

San nodded and held up his hand terminal.

“Come with me,” Mingi said, heading for the steel airlock door into the structure.

San nodded and followed him obediently, his feet dragging along the dusty floor. The airlock whirred beneath Mingi’s passcode, and the smell of fresh linen from the scented air recyclers replaced the sterile, metallic cold of the airlock. The hallway was quiet, aside from the distant hum of a vacuum as the janitor attempted to deal with the fine trickles of red dust that somehow miraculously always ended up covering everything by the time the day was over. It clung to Mingi’s shoes and a fine dusting had probably already sunken into the fibers of his rust coloured uniform just from what was lingering in the airlock.

Mingi stepped into a small, casual interrogation room – designed to be comfortable, yet still intimidating enough to be taken seriously. Mingi gestured for San to take a seat on the squashy couch while he took a seat in the revolving desk chair to pull up the police database on the computer.

“Registration?” He held out his hand, and San deposited his hand terminal into Mingi’s palm. He keyed in the numbers and matched it with a Cormorant Model 6.0 registered to San’s licence. He inputted the fresh charges next to the ones he’d received three months prior. It wouldn’t look good on his insurance review. He handed the terminal back.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” Mingi asked; a trick question, just casual enough to see if he would lie to him.

San’s jaw worked for a moment. Mingi imagined him biting his tongue.

“I figure it’s because I was driving somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be,” he finally answered.

“Driving _recklessly_ where you weren’t supposed to be,” Mingi emphasized. “And your records say this isn’t your first offense. You were caught three months ago out near the Mariner Valley. Both locations are not registered off-road trails, and therefore, not permitted for unauthorized personal crafts. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” San said. His jaw was still clenched, and Mingi wondered if he’d speak the words he was trying to hold back.

“Since you were given a warning last time, this time it will be a ticket,” Mingi clicked a few keys on his monitor. “Terminal number?”

San relayed it, and Mingi confirmed it with the one registered in the database. He inputted the charges – _dangerous driving, trespassing_ – before sending the ticket for San to receive. It pinged into his mailbox. He visibly winced before tucking the terminal back into his pocket.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson this time,” Mingi said, closing down the computer and getting to his feet. “I’ll escort you back to your ship, and I’ll tell the gate keeper to let you out. But if you keep this up, we _will_ be within our rights to impound your vehicle,” Mingi warned.

“I’ll...behave, sir,” San promised, but something in his tone made Mingi doubt such a thing. People like San didn’t just _behave_. He would find a new place to play – perhaps somewhere further away from the Marineris Dome. He hoped the threat against his speeder would knock some sense into him, but Choi San was young and bold.

Sometimes, he felt bad – especially for people who just wanted to have a good time – but maintaining order was his job, and even if he felt pity, he still needed to get paid. His final hope for seeing Earth – and meeting Yunho – was saving up enough money to board one of the commercial vessels that only departed once every Martian year. Tickets were always sold out, and usually resold at a much higher value on external markets. His other chance was a duty transfer from Mars to Earth, but such a thing was rare and saved only for exceptional circumstances.

But Mingi still hoped.

He settled back into the cockpit of his pod and started the engine. “Hangar three, Officer Song Mingi departing from gate two to return to post. Cormorant piloted by Choi San will also be departing.”

Mingi didn’t have to wait long for the response, or for the airlock to open. Choi San’s Cormorant left the hangar before Mingi had finished raising his landing gear. He watched the plume of dust rise across the Martian landscape before vanishing around the other side of the dome.

_Kids,_ Mingi thought wistfully, before pushing the throttle and returning to the featureless landscape surrounding Tharsis.

Four hours and sixty-two minutes to go.

\--

For the first time in six years, the hangar was empty. Mingi pressed his forehead against the window and closed his eyes, as though it would magically change its contents when he opened them again. He already knew it was hopeless. The Nautilus was gone. Despite not being the owner; despite not ever paying a cent to keep it where it was; despite knowing that someday this would happen, Mingi felt as though a part of him had been torn out of his chest. He didn’t look back inside the hangar when he opened his eyes. He walked away and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

The officer on duty at the office was one Mingi knew well from his many visits after work. He looked up from his desk terminal and offered a cheerful wave before his expression dimmed at the sight of Mingi’s gloomy countenance.

“Looking for the Nautilus?” Officer Lim asked, his swivel chair rotating away from the desk.

“Yeah,” Mingi said with a shrug. “But I guess she’s gone now, huh?”

“Yeah,” Officer Lim said, but he was still smiling faintly – a reassuring one that Mingi wanted to wipe away. He didn’t want to feel any amount of comfort if the Nautilus had been scrapped. The thought of that starship – beautiful and well-maintained despite the scratches and dings on her hull; flawless despite the strip-down she endured when she’d come to the center; vacuum-worthy, and powerful – being dumped in a scrapyard and sold for parts was...unbearable. Mingi couldn’t think of robotic arms dismantling her for the last time and stripping her internal components to be melted down without feeling something devasting in his gut. Mingi knew that, despite how ridiculous the notion was, he was grieving the loss of the Nautilus.

“Her owner picked her up a few days ago,” Officer Lim said.

“What?” Mingi lifted his head, his eyes going wide. “She’s been...?”

“He came in wearing fatigues.” Officer Lim said. “I expect he’d just been discharged. He hadn’t even gone home yet.”

“He’s in the military?” Mingi asked. It explained why the ship’s impound fees had been paid on time, every time. The Martian Naval force _paid_, especially higher up the ranks.

“I was surprised too,” Officer Lim said. “Especially since the impound file sites illegal modifications, a lack of transmitter beacon, and a potentially stolen craft. But the theft charge was later dropped. Nobody reported it missing – it was just unregistered.”

“So, it _was _a pirate ship,” Mingi said, waiting for Officer Lim to confirm it for him. Only pirates flew without beacons and a set of registration papers. They were also the only ones who weaponized personal crafts.

But the officer merely shrugged, holding up his hands. “Nobody tells me anything, other than why the ships are locked up here. But it looks likely. According to the files, the sole owner of that ship was him.”

_Which meant he was the one who modified the ship_, Mingi thought numbly. _Which means he is a pirate..._

“If they knew, why did they let him into the military, and why did they give him a licence?” Mingi questioned.

“I’m just as clueless as you are,” Officer Lim shrugged. “But I triple checked those papers – they were real. I gave him a warning to not modify his ship again, but you know how these people are.”

“They’re liars,” Mingi agreed. “And cheaters.”

“Exactly,” Officer Lim smiled. “You’re smart – and you’ve got good instincts. We’ve got all eyes in Port Aries on that Nautilus – PC 1562. She can’t leave or re-enter atmosphere without us knowing about it.”

“It’s still...” Mingi didn’t want to finish the thought. Perhaps he was misjudging, and the owner of the Nautilus was an honest person. Hell, maybe he’d stolen the ship from pirates while he was on duty and turned it into impound. And if he _was _a pirate, there was probably a reason this had been allowed to happen, lying and cheating aside. No matter the ‘why’s, there was nothing more Mingi could do. He would never see the Nautilus again. It left an empty, aching hole in his chest.

“It’s out of our hands, now,” Officer Lim said. “You should head home now. Get some rest.”

“Yeah,” Mingi agreed. “I will.”

But Mingi didn’t honestly know if he’d be sleeping. His mind was darting between a dozen scenarios from government corruption allowing a pirate to have a starship, to selfish, bitter thoughts of snatching the Nautilus away from a faceless man and keeping it on lockdown.

Mingi massaged his forehead as he waited for the tram that would take him home. The time until arrival was steadily ticking down, and the stop was filling up with passengers coming home late from the office. One man was speaking in the melodic leaps and long vowels of the Noctis Dome, Marineris’s sister city. He was promising his wife he would be home soon – just one more day of transfer work in Marineris and he would be back in her arms.

Mingi turned his gaze up towards the dome covered sky. Sometimes, if the air outside was clear enough, he could see Earth on the eastern horizon. Today, he searched for it, thinking of Yunho and wondering what he was doing right now. He wondered if someday he too would be able to make that phone call and promise he would be there soon. If he had a starship like the Nautilus, he could do it right now. He closed his eyes and grimaced.

The lights of his apartment automatically flickered on when he opened the door. The tiny room greeted him with the same, tired appearance he was familiar with. It was faintly musty despite Mingi’s attempts to keep it tidy, and littered with discarded clothing where he’d missed the laundry basket. It was a single room with an attached kitchen, and a bathroom stuffed into a small corner of floorspace. In six paces, he could walk to his folding bed and get no further. It was cramped and claustrophobic, but it wasn’t half as bad as some of the closet-like apartments in the poorer districts where only a single bed and a hotplate could fit. He’d grown up in one of those.

Mingi dumped the duffle bag containing his neatly folded uniform on the floor and sifted through the clothes hanging on their hangers. He picked the baggiest t-shirt and pants he could find and retreated to the bathroom. He kept his shower short, though he would let the hot water run down his back for hours if he could. He couldn’t afford the water bill.

With the last of the Martian dust scrubbed from his face and hair, he scooped up his hand terminal and collapsed onto bed to check his messages. He deleted several spam messages before pausing one he’d received a few hours prior.

_Video Message – From; Jeong Yunho_.

Mingi made himself comfortable and opened it.

The hologram flickered to life over the terminal, staticky but still as coloured as it might’ve been in person. Yunho’s lips were pursed in concentration, his eyes darting from side to side to make sure the video was recording. Mingi had just enough time to take in the soft angles of his face, highlighted in white pixels. The room around him was blurry and out of focus, but Mingi could faintly see the distant shape of a dark window. The time stamp on it confirmed that it had been taken at 9:04PM, Earth time.

_“Hey, Mingi,”_ Yunho finally said, his lips curling into the friendly grin Mingi knew so well. His heart swooped up before dropping back down into place. Yunho’s smile always brightened his day. _“I know it’s been awhile since my last message, but we had a lot of work coming into the shop. Ah...Wooyoung says hello!”_ Yunho laughed again.

_“So...hmm...aside from work...”_ Yunho’s eyes darted to the side as he tried to recall the most recent events. Mingi loved these parts despite them being less informative than they could be. Most people cut their video messages down to conserve time, but Mingi preferred the raw footage of Yunho thinking about what to say next. It felt more personal – more intimate.

_“Ah, yes,”_ Yunho brightened again as he remembered something. _“I know how much you love starships. I got to work on one recently – a Star Jumper! I know it’s more of a shuttle – small details; it can leave atmosphere – and it only does small trips, since it’s a luxury craft. I think the owners use it to travel between Earth and Luna for business, but it was having some engine troubles. Turns out the bottle’s failsafe was getting old and needed replacement. The whole system’s automated – the engine won’t run if the failsafe is broken. Keeps the ship’s reactor from overloading. It was quick, and I only got one scratch,”_ Yunho held up his hand to proudly display a healing wound on the back of his wrist. _“I know you’d prefer that I don’t get any scratches, but I swear, this was an improvement.”_

Mingi shook his head, unable to help but smile, even if he would have to scold him for getting injured in his reply.

_“Good news is though, because it was engine work, I got some extra for labour fees, so I dropped it into the account. Only three thousand credits to go, and I can come see you. I know you said it’s not so great on Mars, but seeing another planet is just...really exciting to me. I want to go there, even if you might not want me to.”_

Mingi’s heart leapt. He might not like the idea of seeing Yunho on his gloomy planet, but Mingi also knew he wouldn’t turn down the chance to see him in person. He thought of finally getting to hold his hand; of taking him to see the domes, and exploring the city he’d grown up in. At first, it would be exciting – but Yunho would soon come to understand that life on Mars wasn’t quite as nice as the postcards made it look. Mingi was certain of that.

But...if he was lucky, he could get on the shuttle back to Earth when it was Yunho’s time to leave, and they would never have to say goodbye again.

_“Speaking of Mars, though...”_ Yunho’s smile faded a little. _“I saw the news the other week. It’s been three years since Elysium, right? I guess you’d know all about it. Everything’s okay, right? Whatever it was hasn’t been spreading to the other domes...? You’re safe where you are...? Let me know, okay? I worry about you – especially with all of these rumours going around. Some people are saying Mars is becoming the new Ceres, but I don’t want to believe that._

_“Over here, things are the same. The UN is keeping Europe in line. France wants land Belgium bought off them a few hundred years ago to square some debt. Germany is backing France, but Belgium has England, so it’s a stalemate. Politics, you know? It almost makes me wish we were just terraformed bubbles too. At least then the boundaries would be easy to draw and remember.”_ Yunho laughed amicably.

_“And the weather...it’s rained for the last three days. I’m surprised our shop hasn’t flooded out yet. It’ll be winter soon, so I hope it eases up before the temperature drops, but the forecast says it’s not likely. I’ll have to salt tomorrow night, just in case.”_

Yunho paused once more, tapping his fingers on the sides of his terminal. His lower lip was pulled between his teeth, and Mingi hoped it didn’t mark the end of their conversation. Just listening to Yunho’s voice made everything feel better.

_“I wish there was more to say,”_ Yunho finally started to speak. _“But all I can think of now is to just say...I miss you, and I can’t wait to finally meet you. Whether we meet on Mars or Earth for the first time, I hope it’s soon. Let’s keep working hard, yeah?_

_“I’ll talk to you later. Bye, Mingi!”_

Yunho’s small wave lingered long enough that when it winked out, the image was temporarily burned into his retinas. With the video message over, Mingi felt alone once more – like they weren’t in the same universe, even though Yunho was a nine-month, interplanetary shuttle ride away at the closest distance.

He let the hand terminal flop into his lap, working on thinking of how to reply. The idea of Yunho repairing a Star Jumper made him smile. Some Martians owned Star Jumpers for vacation flights that never went further than high orbit, but it was more of a vanity piece than a functional one – they had one just because they could. There was nothing worth landing on close enough to Mars for anyone to justify owning a Star Jumper.

As for the conflicts on Earth, Mingi tried not to let his thoughts dwell on them. Land conflicts like the one on Earth were common on Mars, but they were of a different and much more sinister nature. When real estate was limited, prices were high – and greedy realtors sometimes tried to force the poor off their land so they could put up more expensive houses. He was glad the previous Martian Prime Minister had written laws regarding the percentage of land per dome had to go towards affordable housing. It had yet to be overturned, but some people were trying.

He picked up his hand terminal again and started to record.

“Yunho,” He greeted with a warm smile. “I’ve missed you too. I hope your hand is healing and it doesn’t hurt too bad. Today was a long day – nine hours of patrol work just outside of Tharsis. That’s near Olympus Mons, if you don’t know. It took me thirty minutes just to get into position from Marineris.

“I don’t know what’s being said on Earth, but Mars becoming like Ceres is impossible. We have too many good men out there making sure things don’t escalate – and if that fails, we’ve still got the military.

“As for Elysium, yes, it’s still under quarantine. We’re hoping to lift it soon, but we’re waiting on a survey from the inside. I haven’t heard of any reports of the virus outside of the dome, so we’re pretty sure it’s contained. Try not to worry too much. I’m safe here – Marineris is a good city.”

He did have to trail off thoughtfully for a moment, wondering what he could say now that he’d hopefully eased Yunho’s fears. After a few moments, he smiled, deciding to talk about the thing they were both passionate about – spaceships and speeders.

“I’ve never seen a Star Jumper before...was it nice? I hope it was as bougie as I imagine them to be. I _did_ pull over a Cormorant today, though. It’s a hovercraft speeder. I don’t know how many of those are on Earth, but some people use them to travel overland between domes. There aren’t really any roads outside of the cities, so it’s all rogue territory. But that’s why we do sentry – to make sure people in Cormorants don’t wipe out where someone can’t help them.” _And so we can catch pirates before they can disappear back to their unlocated underground bunkers,_ Mingi added mentally. He might lose his job if he mentioned the pirates to a civilian on another planet.

“But, the Cormorant – the guy I pulled over really knew how to handle it. He was using the boulders like an obstacle course and was clocking over two hundred kilometers an hour – completely illegal, obviously – but I wish I could give that kid a track. He’s some pilot. I envy that kind of skill. The Cormorant was beautiful, too – painted metallic silver. I’ve heard they were shaped like a kind of fish...? But we don’t really have fish on Mars, so I just have to take their word for it. Send me some fish photos so I know what they’re talking about,” Mingi laughed, knowing Yunho would probably go above and beyond. Earth’s diverse biosphere would allow him to search up dozens of animals of one specific type and never run out of material.

“I get paid in a few days, so I’ll give you an update on where I’m at in the travel fund soon – I don’t think I’m as close as you, though. Still just over five thousand credits to go. Police work is stable income, but I don’t get a boost like you do when a difficult job comes in. I guess you’ll probably be coming to Mars first – maybe in the next year? Ah—but our year is twice as long as yours,” Mingi laughed. “So, don’t let that scare you. Even if I have to wait two, I’ll be here when you manage to book the shuttle. Will Wooyoung be coming with you? I’d assume so. I’ll try to make sure there’s space for both of you in my tiny apartment, just in case.” He grinned and gave the camera a thumbs up.

“I should probably get dinner ready. I’ve got an early start tomorrow morning – just patrol work this time. They don’t send you on sentry more than two times a week if they can help it – thank god. Mars is pretty lonely when you’re in a little bubble surrounded by desert. _I_ couldn’t do it more than twice a week.

“Ah, remember the Nautilus? I went to go visit her again after work. She’s out of impound – her owner picked her up. I’m going to miss her, but her owner definitely loved her. Can you imagine paying thousands of credits in impound fees just to keep your ship? Whoever they are, they must raking it. I’m jealous?” he laughed again. “I did hear he was in the military though – but that’s just gossip between rusties – police, I mean – don’t spread it around.” He flushed at the slipup in slang. Martians called police officers ‘rusties’ because of their red uniforms.

“Anyway, I’ll really go this time. Hell, I miss you – and I can’t wait to see you. I would vacuum up all of the distance between us right now if I could. I’m all worn out from work and I could use a hug.” He grabbed the nearest pillow and squeezed it to his chest. “So, I’ll just pretend this is you and hug it really tight.” He made sure to make it really obvious he was snuggling up to it, peeking up at Yunho. “I hope to hear from you soon. Talk to you later.” He pressed ‘stop’ on the recording before sending it into the literal void of the internet. It would take a few hours to reach Earth at best. Even at the peak of technology, they were still limited by light speed.

Sighing, Mingi listened to the cheerful _swoosh_ announcing that his video had uploaded and sent properly. He tried to imagine it flying as a streak of light towards Earth and wished he was on it. He tossed the pillow aside. As cute as he’d felt in that moment, it still wasn’t Yunho. Someday it might be, but for now, he had to settle for clutching his pillows in the dead of night and wondering if Yunho would want it.

Groaning, he yanked himself out of bed and started for the kitchen. He might as well make good on what he said he was going to do.


	2. Chapter 2

“So...tell me again what happened...?” Mingi prompted, his digital notepad already half filled with witness notes – most of them conflicting.

“My _suitcase_ was stolen,” the woman said, distress making her voice shrill. Mingi didn’t blame her. What she was talking about was likely her entire life, and the unfortunate reality of communal housing was that sometimes things went missing. Forever. “I saw _that girl _rifling through my things three days ago. It was her – I know it.” She pointed to a young woman – probably too young to be on her own – with a baby. The child was whining quietly, and the pitchy sound was making Mingi’s temple throb. 

“Ma’am, I’ve gathered witness reports from everyone in the room,” Mingi said, trying to stay calm. We’ll do what we can, but nobody can say for certain what’s happened. We’ll check security footage around the building to see if anyone removed your suitcase from the premises, and we’ll check e-marts to see if any of your items have gone up for sale, but we cannot make an arrest until we have enough evidence.”

“Then _what good are you?_” The woman demanded furiously. “I’ve lost _everything_, and you’re telling me you can’t do _anything_?”

This was the hardest part of the job – dealing with the people who had nowhere to go. Nothing to keep their heads above water. People like this haunted his evenings and kept sleep from reaching him. He couldn’t help them all, no matter how much he might want to. It left him with a guilty feeling in his stomach.

“We’ll keep our eyes out,” Mingi tried to reassure. He knew it was futile. “I just need a detailed description of your suitcase and its contents.”

The woman didn’t fail to start again – demanding he arrest the young woman in the corner; demanding he _do something_ when he was already doing everything within his power to help her. After nearly twenty minutes of arguing, she finally began to describe the items that had been stolen, and Mingi made sure to write them all down in specific detail. He’d send the notes off to the experts when he got back to the station.

Finally, with the woman’s statement taken, Mingi pulled the young woman and her baby aside for a second questioning. Her story hadn’t changed – she _had_ touched the woman’s stuff a few days ago looking for a spare wash cloth, but she hadn’t taken anything. Someone else had taken the case, but she didn’t know who. 

Finally, Mingi did the inevitable. With the primary suspects living in the same room as the victim, he had to make sure none of the woman’s described items were in the other tenant’s belongings. He requested all of the tenants leave the apartment while he did individual searches. There was a cruel trick people living with nothing liked to do – and Mingi had seen it more often than he would like. Though he gave every theft report the benefit of the doubt, there was the occasional case where the victim lied about having things stolen and attempted to claim items in other people’s bags as their own during a search. That was why he chose to search bags and boxes privately – with only the owner present.

The contents of each bag were meager. Three shirts and one single pair of heavily torn briefs. A lone bracelet – their one valuable possession they kept out of sight at all times. Battered hand terminals. Pages torn out of religious texts so poured over that fingerprints had smudged the ink to the point of illegibility. Mingi had seen it all, and even less. With none of the woman’s belongings accounted for, he was forced to call it a day.

The woman screamed herself hoarse when Mingi reported no findings. He warned the other tenants that any theft would be taken seriously, and if anything more went missing, or if any further trouble arose (such as attempts at a little thing Mingi knew as ‘street justice’) to report it to the Martian police immediately.

Then, he left the tenants to themselves. 

Out front, he sank onto his scooter and tried not to look harried. The subliminal whirr of the electric engine accompanied his departure. His tires popped and clicked as they rolled between narrow streets with barely room for a crowd. They hadn’t even bothered to pave this neighbourhood, but enough feet had graced the red earth that it was pounded flat. Not even hardy Martian grass grew here. Mingi tried to ignore the cruel resemblance of the road to the people who lived on it. A few heads turned to watch him pass, their expressions unreadable. When people saw rusties in a neighbourhood like this, the question wasn’t _why_, it was _how many more times this week_.

As he left the neighbourhood behind, Mingi breathed a sigh of relief. The cool air of the dome brushed along his cheeks as his tires found proper pavement and picked up speed. He wove into traffic, a few other scooter drivers casting wary glances his way before steering clear. Nobody liked driving near police officers – not that he blamed them. He wouldn’t exactly like being near someone who could issue him a life-ruining ticket.

His trip back to the station was blissfully uneventful. His radio was kindly informing him that other officers on patrol duty weren’t so lucky. He was glad to park his scooter and cut off the constant stream of news. He double checked his waist pack for his note pad before heading inside.

The station hallways were as quiet as ever, with only a handful of sounds filling the spaces. The click of keyboards; the quiet buzz of the coffee machine; the distant hum of the air filters. Mingi tapped on the office door of the stolen goods expert and filed the report. The bored officer took the notes and uploaded a fresh file to dump with the dozens of others, all organized by location. There were so many files that Mingi hopelessly knew anything they saw in e-shops could’ve been stolen at some point or another.

Checking his terminal, he let out a relieved sigh at the time. He was due for a break. He headed out to the front desk to announce he was going off duty for lunch. As he was swiping his card, he spotted a familiar face behind the glass.

Choi San.

He was scanning his terminal with the officer, a tired expression on his face. He looked up, saw Mingi, and frowned. Mingi tried to offer a smile before turning away and leaving through the employee’s exit. He was probably here to pay his ticket – nothing more. 

But much to his surprise, he was barely across the street when a voice was calling his name.

“Officer Song?”

Mingi paused and turned, raising a startled eyebrow when he realized who had followed him.

“...Mr. Choi?” Mingi asked.

San trotted up to him and folded his arms over his chest. “I just wanted to let you know I fought my ticket – and won.”

“So, you came to boast?” Mingi asked, starting to walk, but keeping his pace slow so San could follow if he desperately wanted to.

“No, I came to argue – or are you going to cuff me for that too?”

“I’m technically on break and I’m going to get lunch,” Mingi said idly. “Shout away. Call me whatever unpleasant names you feel are appropriate. I’m sure I’ve heard it before.”

San grimaced at that. He stayed silent for a few, tense seconds before continuing. “I got the reckless driving charge waived. Because _technically_ I wasn’t endangering anyone other than myself, and there wasn’t any property nearby to damage.”

“And the trespassing?” Mingi asked.

“It was unregistered territory. The judge didn’t even know where I was talking about – he just signed off on the ticket.”

“Ah.” Mingi pushed into his favourite lunch shop. The bell jingled above the door, and the woman behind the counter smiled and waved.

“The usual, officer?” She asked. “And anything for your friend?”

Mingi glanced back at San. “Want a coffee?”

Startled, San remained silent for a moment. His cheeks flushed a faint shade of crimson. Then, he held up his hands. “Sure. Thanks.”

“Two americanos, then,” Mingi said to the waitress. “And yes, the usual.”

She smiled brightly and resumed her work behind the coffee machines. Mingi pulled out a chair at a table for two and gestured for San to take a seat across from him. Slowly, San cast him a suspicious glance before sitting down. Mingi set his hat on the table next to him and ruffled his sweaty hair.

“So, you were telling me I’m wrong, and you’re right?” Mingi asked.

San flushed darker and glanced towards the counter where the waitresses were tittering happily. He turned back to Mingi and tried to settle his nervous expression. Apparently being caught in a café with a cop wasn’t exactly on his list of things to do that day – but he had chosen to follow.

_ When you dig your grave, _ Mingi thought tiredly, _you lie in it_.

“You weren’t exactly the first one to...catch me out there,” San said, once again shooting a wary glance at the counter.

“I know,” Mingi replied, but San held up a hand to silence him. Mingi obliged.

“You were the second to actually put something into my file – but maybe the fifteenth to actually stop me,” San said, his arms folded across his chest. “So, what the hell made you feel special enough to fine me?” 

Mingi was about to answer, but San’s eyes shot left again. He fell silent as a pair of soft footsteps approached before two, steaming americanos were placed in front of them. Mingi took his with a grateful sip. 

“Perfect as always, thank you,” Mingi told the waitress.

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders as though it wasn’t a big deal. “Your meal will be out in about five minutes,” she said before casting a brief glance towards San. “Will you be ordering anything...?”

San tapped his fingers on the table thoughtfully for a moment. “Club sandwich?” He asked.

“Of course,” she said. She flashed Mingi another charming smile before vanishing back behind the counter.

“She fancies you,” San said, an amused curve to his lips.

“What?” Mingi looked up from his coffee cup.

“You didn’t notice?” San’s smile disappeared faster than it had appeared. “Jeez—where’s your head? On Jupiter?”

_ On Earth, _ Mingi almost said. He just shrugged half-heartedly. “No, I just...don’t notice these things?”

San snorted and rolled his eyes. He looked over towards the counter once more and brushed a hand through his bangs. The sound of a spoon falling echoed through the café. San smiled in a self-satisfied way before turning back towards Mingi.

“You spend _way_ too much time in the office,” he said.

_ Probably _ , Mingi thought, but didn’t have the heart to say it out loud. He took another sip of his coffee instead.

“Anyway, you haven’t answered my question – why _did_ you fine me?” San asked, leaning across the table towards him.

“I’d hoped it would stop you from going out there as much,” Mingi replied honestly.

“Liar,” San snorted.

“I’m serious,” Mingi assured. “It’s dangerous out there – especially where you were. There’s a reason the trails are marked.”

“There’s nothing out there but a bunch of rocks,” San protested.

_ You’d be surprised, kid, _ Mingi thought tiredly. He massaged his forehead and tried to think of how to gently explain the situation outside of the domes without giving away too much classified information, but San’s darting eyes announced the arrival of the waitress. She set a toasted club sandwich in front of San, and a BLT paired with a bowl of leek soup in front of Mingi. A soft bun with a smear of butter was still steaming next to it. Mingi looked up at her with another thank you, and this time, spotted the tentative blush on the waitress’s cheeks. He shot San a startled glance as she left. San raised his hands as if to say _I told you so_, his lips curled into the same, self-satisfied smirk he’d seen earlier.

Their conversation fell silent as they dug into their meals. Mingi, ravenous after a near six-hour patrol, scarfed down half of his sandwich within five minutes, barely even tasting the earthy flavour of vat grown meat. By the time San was contentedly brushing the crumbs of the first half of his sandwich on his napkin, Mingi had to pause to properly enjoy the meal. He wiped his lips with his napkin and took a second to wash it down with a gulp of coffee.

“There’s something out there, isn’t there?” San abruptly asked, his hands folded on the table in front of him. “That’s why you’ve doubled sentries in the last year.”

Mingi didn’t even know how to lie about it. A normal Martian citizen who stayed within the domes and on the marked trails between cities would never have noticed. But someone like San – someone who had probably been stunt driving out on every plain he could find between here and Cydonia since he was old enough to have a licence – the abrupt spike in police presence was more than noticeable.

“You might as well be honest,” San said, picking up his sandwich again. “Almost every time I get yanked, they fact check every paper I have – and play twenty questions with me about them.”

“Look,” Mingi said, stirring his soup. “I’m not _allowed_ to give you details—”

“Then don’t,” San interrupted. “Just quit hiding the truth.”

“Wait... Have you...seen anything...?” Mingi asked, looking up at San with a frown.

San shrugged again. “Some speeders that _definitely_ weren’t rusties, but I didn’t get close.”

_ Speeders _ . “Did you get a good look at them...?”

“No,” San contemplated his sandwich. “They were blending pretty well with the dirt. I think they were painted red. I only saw them because my environment sensors are always maxed out; to check for bumps and stuff. They got highlighted and it took me a few seconds to realize they were moving. They didn’t even show up on RADAR.”

Mingi felt ice drop into his stomach. “When...? Where did you see this...?”

“About four months ago,” San replied. “They were over by Labryinthus about an hour south of Noctis. I haven’t gone back there.”

“Would you come back to the station with me?” Mingi asked. “There are people who would like to know this.”

San wrinkled his nose. “As long as nothing I say incriminates me, sure.”

“I’ll make sure of it. You’ll have to give a witness statement.”

“So, it _was_ something?” San’s expression brightened into a cheeky grin.

“I’m not saying that – I’m saying—” He cut himself off, knowing he’d been backed into a corner. San was preening. His less than permissible hobby had amounted to something worthwhile. He took another bite out of his sandwich, and Mingi decided to throw in the towel on this one.

“If the detectives want to give you the details, they will. Otherwise, I’m keeping my mouth shut. I’m not allowed to tell you anything.” Mingi stuffed the last bite of his BLT into his mouth to emphasize his point. He couldn’t very well talk with his mouth full.

San wrinkled his nose in distaste but didn’t push the issue. He took a long gulp of his americano and licked his lips. “When do we go in?”

Mingi checked his break timer. “Ten minutes. Finish your sandwich, and we’ll go.”

\--

If San’s history of being caught stunt driving affected the credibility of his statement, nobody said a word about it. Mingi was allowed to sit in on the interview process behind the two-way mirror. Chief Han, a pudgy, bald man with more years in policing than there were hairs remaining on his head, drummed his fingers on his thigh as he listened to the interview. The process was long, and San’s initial enthusiasm to give his statement eventually collapsed beneath a wave of repetition and boredom. It probably didn’t help that the detective questioning him didn’t give him a crumb of information about what he’d seen.

When Detective Park left, San slumped in his chair. His eyes ran over the mirror, seeking but not seeing the shadows behind the reflective surface. The mirror’s build was flawless. San wouldn’t be able to tell how many people were on the other side – or even who was there.

Detective Park pushed the door on Mingi’s side open. “Well...his statement is solid,” he said when the door had slid shut. He dropped his digital notepad onto the table in front of Chief Han. “It’s enough that I contacted the Noctis Police Department – they’re going to send a sentry out tomorrow morning to watch the area. They’ll let us know if they find anything.”

Chief Han nodded and swiped through the notes silently, reviewing the words he’d already heard through the mirror. “Good. Just in case, I want Mr. Choi escorted home and checked up on daily. If it’s been months since he’d seen the speeders, they’ve probably decided he wasn’t a problem or didn’t see him out there, but I don’t want to risk leaving him on his own just in case he’s being watched. Officer Song, can you take care of that?”

“Sure,” Mingi agreed. 

“My biggest concern is that if we take action too hard, and too fast, it’ll spook whoever’s there and they’ll move operations,” detective Han said, massaging the back of his head. “Or worse – if they spot us before we spot them, we don’t know how they will react.”

“Noctis will not be making close approaches,” Detective Park replied. “They said they’ll just be watching to see if Mr. Choi’s information is correct, and they’ll call us for backup if they need it. I passed along the information about the RADAR not picking up their speeders. They’ll be putting their environmental sensors to maximum and scanning for changes.”

“Hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of this soon and we can launch a raid,” Chief Han said tiredly, transferring the notes over to his digital pad and pocketing the device. “Alright—let’s call it a day. Officer Song, change out of your uniform and take Mr. Choi home. You’re dismissed for the day.”

“Thank you,” Mingi bowed before sneaking a glance at the clock. Taking San’s statement had pulled him off street patrol, but also forced him into an extra hour of work. Escorting San home and checking up on him was the standard protective action for low-risk witnesses, but Mingi felt inadequate. He knew he’d probably been picked because he had been the one who’d brought San into the station in the first place, but he was still just a patrol-sentry officer. If something happened, would he be capable of protecting San? He couldn’t even help a woman who’d had her bag stolen.

Mingi nudged the questioning room open, and San looked up.

“Are there more questions...?” He asked, his eyes scanning down Mingi’s civilian clothing. It was a baggy hoodie, pants that wouldn’t be out of place in an old cowboy movie and a pair of worn out sneakers. Mingi had never felt self-conscious of his clothing choices before, but San’s brand name fashion made him feel like he was covered in mud.

“No,” Mingi shook his head. “I’m taking you home.”

“So,” San’s brow creased in frustration, his voice starting to carry an odd undertone. It was sharp, yet also softer. It was dangerous, and Mingi instinctively began running over a thousand ways to defuse the situation. “I spent what, two hours in this room just talking about a couple of speeders, and still, nobody’s going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“San—”

“No, shut up,” San demanded, now on his feet. He turned towards the two-way glass – completely reflective from this side. “I have been pulled over, fined, threatened, and apparently saw some shit I wasn’t supposed to see – oh, and did I mention, Earth-based news outlets are now reporting that _Mars_ – fucking _Mars_ – is turning into a second Ceres? 

“Something’s going on – and it’s obvious; the public are starting to see it too. It’s coffee break gossip – and I’m being put under what, _witness protection_? Escorted home like I need a babysitter just because I saw a couple of speeders? Maybe if you _told_ me what I needed to be protected from, I would _at least_ be able to protect my damn family too – my family’s fucking _business_. Or are you just going to keep going with your sloppy coverups until someone actually dies?”

“San,” Mingi interrupted again. “Everyone’s going home. There’s nobody back there.” Probably a lie, but Mingi just needed him to calm down.

San grimaced and turned away from the two-way mirror. Though he sighed heavily, he followed Mingi out of the room without another complaint. He’d gone silent now, but Mingi watched him out of the corner of his eye, wary of another outburst.

The tram ride home was nauseatingly silent. San leaned against the window, staring out at the city as they passed. His dark eyes were blank – exhausted. Mingi wasn’t surprised. Interrogations left anyone spent, whether they did something wrong or not. He wanted to reach out and comfort him, but he knew better. Just because he was a police officer escorting a civilian home didn’t mean he could behave like a friend.

San’s neighbourhood was the one Mingi always saw from outside the domes. Smashed between business skyscrapers were artful condominiums with stunted trees planted on the triangular balconies to catch the weak sunlight that slipped through the dome. San pulled a card key out of his pocket and swiped it at the security door and paused to punch something more into the pin pad.

“You have to scan your terminal, since you’re a guest,” San said.

“There’s a security door,” Mingi said, but began fumbling in his pocket. “I don’t have to take you all the way up to your apartment.”

“Yeah, well, they’re paying you to escort me home. I don’t consider the front entrance _home_.” San wrinkled his nose and turned away, giving Mingi time to fish out his hand terminal and the ID card loaded. He scanned it, and the soft beep confirmed his entry. His name appeared next to San’s before disappearing.

The elevator up was silent. The mechanism barely made a sound aside from a soft hum and the click of magnets pushing the car upwards. Mingi felt his gut swoop into his throat as it slid to a stop and the doors swung open.

San’s apartment was three doors down the hall. He keyed in his code and held the door for Mingi to step inside. For a moment, he hesitated, but obliged. He tried not to look too hard at the apartment’s layout. It was much larger than his own, and had windows that looked out onto the city below. He could see the Martian landscape, dyed a deep blood red in the sunset, and the glitter of the Olympus dome; a white-grey speck in the distance. It was beautiful.

The apartment itself was impeccable, aside from the general untidiness of being lived in. San was rich enough to afford a handful of real, paper books, likely printed on Earth. Mingi couldn’t remember ever touching one, let alone reading from one.

“Be honest,” San said, peeling off his jacket. “Just tell me what I saw.”

Mingi hesitated. He should’ve known there was a reason San had invited him all the way to the privacy of his apartment. And after his outburst in the interrogation room, Mingi’s own resolve was crumbling. 

“Camouflaged speeders that don’t show up on RADAR aren’t exactly standard issue,” San went on. “I just want to _know_. I won’t tell anybody.”

“Pirates,” Mingi answered. “They’re pirates.”

San’s eyes widened slightly, but his expression relaxed a moment later. He nodded his head and hung up his jacket.

“_That_ I believe,” he said. “So...they’re really here. On Mars?”

“Yeah,” Mingi ran a hand through his hair. “We just don’t know how many or how far their influence spreads. We just know they’re here.”

“For how long...?” San asked.

“Longer than most of us care to admit,” Mingi sighed. “Long enough to have established a base we have yet to find.”

“Labyrinthus?” 

“Maybe.”

“How the fuck could they have built _anything_ there?”

“That’s what we want to know too. We have no idea.”

San laughed and shook his head. “Unbelievable...”

“Pirates are smart. They know how to hide,” Mingi argued. “Not showing up on RADAR is the least of it.”

San held up his hands in defeat. “Well...I sure as hell hope one raid will fix it.”

“Me too,” Mingi replied, but even he doubted it.

\--

Twice a day, Mingi called San from the station. Twice a day, San confirmed he was fine – that nothing had happened, and he didn’t feel as though he was in any danger. He was much more complacent now that he knew the truth, and a quick scan of local hangar entries and exits reported that his Cormorant hadn’t left in a week. San had locked himself down. Mingi felt relieved, and also proud.

He was kept busy throughout the week. His sentry shifts had doubled, leaving him with too much time to dwell on what was happening in Noctis. Yunho sent him a reply while he’d been out on a nine-hour shift, but by the time he’d gotten home, he’d been too tired to reply to it, though he watched it more than once to give himself something to smile about.

The reports from Noctis were weak. They’d been combing the area, but there had been no sign of activity. It looked as though San’s information had been a dud. Perhaps seeing the speeders had been a mere accident; or even that San’s environmental sensors had picked up on budding dust devils rather than solid speeders. 

Yet, Mingi wasn’t sure. San’s initial nervousness and desire to learn what lied beyond the domes told him he _had_ seen something tangible. He was so certain that he insisted on calling San back into the station one last time. As hesitant as Chief Han was, he eventually relented.

And that was why Mingi was sitting behind the two-way mirror once more as San attempted to describe the landmarks he’d seen four months ago. The information wasn’t new, but this time he took the time to pull up the map on his hand terminal and show them roughly where he’d been when he spotted the speeders. Detective Park took down the notes and eventually joined them behind the mirror to give the report, leaving San looking visibly irritated.

“There’s an easier way to do this,” Mingi spoke up, as the reports were passed along to Noctis. “We could take him out there, and he can show us where he saw the speeders.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Chief Han replied.

“But it would be easier than wasting another week of man power searching for a needle in a haystack,” Mingi offered. “We won’t get close – we’ll just get close _enough_ that San can show us where he saw them, and then we can escort him back to Marineris.”

“He has a point, Chief,” Detective Park said, still on the line with Kang Jinwoo, Noctis’s chief of police. His bearded face was contemplative where it hovered just above the contact terminal 

“We’ll take the witness,” the Chief Kang said. “I want this solved sooner rather than later.”

“There is another option. I know it’s a last resort,” Chief Han interrupted. “The ex-pirate—the one who turned himself in. Maybe he knows something?”

“No,” Chief Kang replied. “And if I ever see that man again, he’s going straight to jail for withholding the location of this base.”

“He gave us everything he knew,” Chief Han replied.

“You know what? I don’t believe that anymore. Send the witness. We’ll receive him outside of Noctis.”

“We’ll send him with Officer Song.”

“Good.” Chief Kang killed the connection so firmly, Mingi heard the tap of his finger just before the image cut out.

“You had a tip-off,” Mingi said faintly, the new information swimming through his head.

“Yes,” Chief Han replied. “And now that you know, you are to keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you. Consider yourself promoted – you’re being added to the roster of this investigation. Now take Mr. Choi to Noctis.”

Mingi swallowed and nodded his head. He didn’t dare ask if the ‘promotion’ would come with a pay raise, or if he’d only been added to the investigation because he’d overheard something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Can I ask one question?” Mingi said, pausing halfway to the investigation room. “That man with the tip-off...he didn’t happen to own a Nautilus, did he?”

Chief Han blinked in confusion. “What does this have to do with the investigation?”

“I’m just curious,” Mingi shrugged, a hot flush to his cheeks. “I like starships, and it’s not every day one of them gets impounded for six years. I brushed the dust off her in my spare time. She got picked up recently. Impound records aren’t exactly classified intel, either.”

“Impound officers gossip worse than teenagers...” Chief Han grumbled. “If you must know, the Nautilus’s owner turned himself in in exchange for a free life on Mars. His intel led to the takedown of seven illegal gates in Port Aries, and the arrest of thirty-two pirates and six ships. The base we’re looking for? He called it the Ratway. He didn’t have an exact location, but three of the gates we shut down had tunnels connecting to it.”

“And then he joined the military?” Mingi asked.

Chief Han paused. “How did you know that?”

“Impound officer gossip. He picked up his ship in fatigues.”

“Fucking Christ,” Chief Han grimaced. “Yes—after we confirmed his information was correct, he agreed to take twenty years of service to Mars in exchange for a clean record. Which is why contacting him again is a last resort, and why _this_ needs to be kept _quiet_. If the public found out we allowed a pirate into the military, there would be riots.”

“How do you know he really had a change of heart?” Mingi asked.

“We don’t. We can only assume, given the circumstances.” Chief Han’s lips thinned. “But what really matters is his ship is out of the stars – along with six others.”

“But you gave him his ship back,” Mingi pointed out.

“I _know_,” Chief Han looked frustrated now. “_That_ was an order signed off by General Eden. We couldn’t refuse. Whatever that man did to earn that medal gained the General’s trust, and he gave us permission to release the ship and issue a licence.”

Mingi let out a breath and nodded his head. That cleared up _a lot_. Yet, despite having wanted to know the truth behind the Nautilus’s trip into impound, it didn’t make him feel any better. Knowing he’d spent the last six years polishing a pirate ship left a sour taste in his mouth.

“I’ll take San to Noctis now,” Mingi said, dipping his head in a bow.

“Please do. And remember—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Mingi vowed. 

“Good.”

Mingi bowed again before exiting the room. He took a breath before opening the door. San sat up straighter, his lips pursed into a thin line.

“Are you here to take me home? Because I want to go home now.”

“No,” Mingi shook his head. “I’m escorting you to Noctis.”

“Am I going to spend another hour in a room?” San asked.

“No. You’re going to take us to where you saw those speeders.”

San brightened and shot out of his seat. “Done. Let’s go.”

Mingi couldn’t help but smile and led San out of the room. They took a scooter, with San’s face hidden beneath a helmet, towards hangar six. While it wasn’t abnormal to see civilians on the back of police scooters, it still tended to turn heads, and Mingi didn’t want to risk San being recognized by anyone who might’ve known him. People tended to draw the wrong conclusions when many of the people seen with police were merely witnesses.

A Landstrider was waiting for them, fully loaded with water and rations for the journey, and a little extra in case of emergency. Mingi wasted no time ushering San into the back seat. He’d been about to show him how to buckle in when he remembered San regularly made use of a hovercraft. The belts were located in different spots than his Cormorant if his fumbling had anything to say about it, but he still managed to put the straps on correctly before Mingi had pulled the Landstrider’s door into place and started the airlock sequence. Cool, sterile air pumped from the recyclers as the fans activated, and Mingi started the pre-flight system check.

“How fast does this thing go?” San asked, his eyes twinkling as he peered as far as the belts would allow over Mingi’s shoulder. “What HUD features does it have? Do the weapons use LADAR, or does it do everything with RADAR?”

“Ah, it’s—” Mingi started to say, but realized telling a civilian about the specifications of a police issued Landstrider was classified information. He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

San let out an audible huff, but Mingi could see the smile on his face in the windshield’s reflection. He was far more excited than he should’ve been considering he was inside of a police vehicle. But perhaps San was like him, and had a love of ships.

Mingi flipped the communications switch, and a crackle of static announced the connection. “Hangar six, this is officer Song Mingi, badge 37752, escorting Choi San to Noctis. Departing from gate four. All systems reporting green – ready for launch,” Mingi announced.

“Copy, Officer Song Mingi, airlock opening in five,” the voice replied.

San’s feet tapped impatiently on the floor. Mingi double checked the systems, reading the details just to kill time. When the _all clear_ came, Mingi began the ignition sequence. The Landstrider hummed around him, and San made an appreciative sound.

“Can you at least tell me the model?” San asked, his fingers flexing on the arm rests.

“It’s a Landstrider,” Mingi replied.

San closed his eyes. “She doesn’t purr like the Cormorant, but _that’s_ a good engine. I’m guessing...more than one-fifty?”

_ Shit, he’s good _ , Mingi thought, shaking his head and hiding his smile.

“Is it six exhaust ports, or is it eight?” San asked.

“Eight,” Mingi replied, still unable to keep in the grin.

San whistled. “Six on the bottom, two on the back?”

“Five and three,”

“_Damn,_”

Mingi laughed, and the countdown began. He turned the Landstrider around, the red dust in the hangar blowing up into the air. As it slid open, the dust whooshed into the low-pressure atmosphere and Mingi gently nudged the Landstrider forward. 

The Martian landscape opened up before him, and Mingi steered himself onto the marked trail and pushed his speed up to fifty. Dust blew up behind them, and the Marineris dome vanished from sight.

“Cormorants have the six on the bottom,” San started to speak, his eyes trained out onto the rusty landscape. The sky was pale shade of grey today with the barest hint of red. It was a perfectly clear day as far as Mars was concerned. “It gives it a smoother ride. The exhaust ports on the back are small. It basically shoots air out like a rocket – that’s how they get their speed. But I guess yours could beat mine on acceleration thanks to the extra exhaust port, huh?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mingi laughed. “I’ve never raced one.”

“It does what, zero to one in five seconds?”

“Something stupid like that,” Mingi agreed.

“My Cormorant does it in seven,” San said. “Which is absolutely shitty for a sport vehicle, by the way – but it pays off in control.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it. I’ve only ever driven this thing,” he tapped the helm of the Landstrider for emphasis. “I don’t own a speeder.”

“Not even a Charger?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, they do _not_ pay you enough,” San laughed.

Mingi wanted to agree. “It’s enough to live, and that’s good enough for me,” he said instead. 

San hummed and shrugged his shoulders. He scooped up one of the water bottles and took a gulp of it. Mingi engaged the autopilot and grabbed one of his own.

Noctis was an hour and a half out from Marineris, but the trip felt shorter. San kept up a string of banter about speeders, and Mingi listened raptly, giving his own input where he could. It felt good to share an interest with San. By the time the Noctis dome came into view, Mingi had forgotten to be worried about where they were going.

He keyed in the code for the Noctis police hangar and waited for the _ping_ announcing the accepted connection.

“Noctis, this is Officer Song Mingi of Marineris, badge 37752, arriving with witness Choi San under the orders of Noctis Police Chief Kang Jinwoo.”

A crackle of static, and finally, “Copy, Officer Song. Proceed to rendezvous point.” A pair of coordinates appeared on his display and Mingi sent them to the navigation system. A beacon appeared on his HUD, and he steered his Landstrider to follow it.

“We’re not going in?” San asked.

“I guess they’re meeting us outside,” Mingi said with a shrug.

San made a quiet sound, watching the Noctis dome pass by them. It looked about as nice as Marineris, but Mingi had never been inside. 

A squadron of six police Landstriders waited for him on the other side of the dome. Mingi sent them a video call, and six faces appeared in split screen on his HUD.

“Reporting, Officer Song Mingi from Marineris,” Mingi said, his own face tucked into the corner where it was barely noticeable to him.

“Good. We can start,” a middle-aged woman said, her hair pulled up into a bun so tight, her forehead appeared elongated. Her badge revealed her as the leader of the squadron. “Officer Song, keep your communications channel active at all times. We will follow your lead from the witness’s directions.”

“You’re up, San. Point the way,” Mingi said. 

San loosened his belt and peered over Mingi’s shoulder. His face appeared on the communications channel, and Mingi saw the stiff expression of one officer break slightly as he held in a laugh.

“That way,” he said. “Towards that hill. It was on the other side.”

Mingi pushed the throttle, heading for the hill. 

“And turn up your environment sensors. It’s rough out there.”

Mingi did as he was told, even though the sensors cluttered his screen like an old arcade game. He squinted through the colourful noise and swiped the communications display down to the lower corner of his screen.

While the trip to Noctis has been enjoyable, the trip towards where San had seen the speeders was exhausting. The officers refused to speak of anything more than their task, and maintained their composure no matter how many times San appeared to direct their path.

The roads became bumpy, and the expressions of discomfort on some of the officer’s faces became increasingly apparent. Mingi had to grip the helm tightly to keep a steady speed, and the visual noise of his environmental sensors was giving him a headache.

“How much further, Mr. Choi?” The woman asked.

“Not far; I think...oh—”

Mingi punched the breaks, and the officers made startled noises as they followed suit.

“What’s wrong, Officer Song?” 

“I saw them,” Mingi said. “They’re at eleven o’clock—they just went behind that ridge.”

“What?”

“I don’t see...”

“Put your sensors up – he’s right!”

“Nothing’s on RADAR...”

“They don’t _show up_ on RADAR!” San shouted over the noise.

“Mr. Choi, do not shout,” the woman scolded, squinting upwards – apparently at her own HUD display.

“I saw them,” the officer who had nearly laughed at San said. “I _definitely_ saw them.”

“Why right now though?” Another one asked. “I’ve been out every day this week, and I haven’t seen a single—”

Three things happened at once. 

The first was a klaxon sounding in Mingi’s Landstrider. His HUD flashed a red beacon, highlighting the exact direction of a targeting laser. The second was San throwing off his safety belt and lunging over the back of his seat to jerk the helm with a wild shout. The third was an explosion to his right – a momentary phosphorescence as one of the Landstriders went up in a puff of vapour and smoke. Mingi barely registered the exhaust plume of the missile that had almost hit them before it exploded uselessly against a boulder.

“We’ve been spotted! Assailants are hostile! Evasive maneuvers! Shoot to kill!” 

Mingi barely had time to prepare himself for the next jerk of the wheel. Mingi gripped San around the waist and held onto him for dear life as his Landstrider shot up to speed. He didn’t even argue the fact that San had not only left his seat, but was now piloting the Landstrider from his lap. The time for questioning it was later, and Mingi knew with a disturbing certainty that if San hadn’t taken the wheel, they’d both be frostbitten corpses in the Martian desert. One by one, the communication channels turned to black, leaving only two faces at the corner of his screen.

“They’re catching up,” San said breathlessly, sweat running down his temples. “How do I shoot the guns?”

“There’s a separate toggle. It’s not on the helm,” Mingi unbuckled his seatbelt and threw it over his shoulders. If the Landstrider abruptly decelerated, the blunt force trauma of being thrown into the windshield would be a more merciful death than icy suffocation on the surface of Mars. He shifted his legs to give San all of the space he needed and gripped the joystick just beneath the helm. He opened the switch to disable, and after a moment’s hesitation, he twisted it up to lethal. 

“Swipe that screen over there,” Mingi pointed to where a fresh panel of his HUD had appeared near the helm and gestured to where he could see it over San’s shoulder.

San swiped it with an easy flick of his hand, and the two remaining comm channels shifted upwards to accommodate. Another one of them went dark. The remaining pair of eyes looked up at him in terror.

“Weapons set to kill,” the officer said, his voice steadier than it should’ve been considering the situation. “Godspeed.”

“Godspeed,” Mingi agreed, and twisted the joystick.

The railguns went off in a shocking rattle that made San flinch. He let out a breathy sound, and Mingi didn’t dare look at his face. He kept his eyes locked on the screen, manually targeting the speeders pursuing them. There was too much dust disturbing the LADAR’s automatic aiming systems. One of speeders crashed and rolled into the dust as Mingi pulled the trigger for a second time. 

The last comm channel vanished with a panicked shout. Mingi abruptly felt conscious of the air in his lungs. San sobbed, his hands shaking as he pressed the helm as far into the dashboard as he could. The Landstrider was clocking one-seventy. The engine was screaming, but it wasn’t giving out. Mingi shot another speeder. It blundered into a boulder and exploded in a hail of fire and ice.

“Get us to those rocks, San,” Mingi said.

“Y-You’re crazy,” San choked, but steered towards the slalom of scattered stones complete with a downhill slope. 

“I’ve seen you drive. Just go.”

San nodded and didn’t let up on the throttle. He spun into the boulder field easily, testing the Landstrider’s handling with a handful of rocks before plunging into the craggy depths. Mingi quickly became dizzy at the HUD display, but San’s eyes were unblinking. With easy flicks of his wrists, the Landstrider slipped between deadly rocks like a snake. Behind them, one speeder attempted to pursue and almost immediately crashed. The other three took a handful of shots in their direction, sending up plumes of dust and scattered stones across the windshield. The sensors stuttered, but San barely flinched. They slipped out of range – and Mingi lost sight of the three speeders.

San kept up on the throttle, the sweat dripping down his forehead and into his eyes. Mingi sat up straight and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“They’re gone, San—ease off.” 

San trembled, but nodded and gently pulled the throttle back. The engine whined gratefully, sinking back down to a relaxed one-hundred. San took them between the rocks with soft touches, and when they came out the other side, they were at the edge of a crater. San pulled the Landstrider to a stop. He swept the scanners with a shaking hand, noting the lack of pursuit.

Then he broke.

Mingi clutched him against his body, holding onto his wrists to keep him from clawing at his chest. San’s agonized breathing was painful to listen to, but Mingi didn’t let go, his eyes locked onto the rock field in search of movement. His heart jolted painfully in his chest every time he thought he saw one of the boulders moving, but none of them were. San dissolved into a choking fit and retched emptily over the cockpit floor.

“I-I’m so-sorry, I-I do-don’t kn-know wh-what—” San choked, but Mingi gently silenced him.

“It’s just a panic attack. You’re in shock,” Mingi said, and he felt as though the only thing that was keeping himself from having the same reaction was his years in the police force. “Honestly, after what just happened, I don’t blame you for a second.”

San let out a hysterical laugh. The sound was unpleasant and grating. Mingi took a slow breath inward and let it out. His heart was still beating fast enough that he thought it might tear itself in two. But they couldn’t hover here – not when those speeders could be looking for them.

He carried San back to his seat and strapped him in. He set the beacon for Noctis and began to drive.

Not for a single second did Mingi take his eyes off the HUD, and not for a single second did Mingi make an effort to stop the tears from soaking into the neck of his uniform.

\--

Mingi was barely given time to rest when he returned to Noctis. He was hauled into the station, thrown into a seat, and questioned until he was barely standing. He only hoped San had been treated better.

Then, he slept. He slept until he was woken up and dumped into the back of a Noctis police department Landstrider. He briefly saw San, his expression blank and tired, before the door of a second Landstrider slammed closed above him. Mingi couldn’t argue – he couldn’t even think past the events of the day before.

The familiar halls of Marineris didn’t feel welcoming. He was dropped into another interrogation room alone and questioned once again on the events of the day before. Mingi answered each one before demanding to know where San had gone and if he was okay. His question was ignored. After another hour, they were finally allowed to see each other a large conference room. San’s eyes were swollen and his hair was a tattered, tangled mess, but he quickly rose to his feet to greet Mingi with a hug. His body felt fragile beneath his hands, and Mingi hated himself for causing this.

_ If only I hadn’t asked you to come back to the station with me, _ Mingi thought, hot tears spilling into San’s hair. _If only I hadn’t insisted they take your information..._

San stayed next to him as Chief Kang shouted himself hoarse to Chief Han, grieving in anger rather than depression. Six good men and women had died on duty following a lead from a civilian tip-off. The statement made San start to cry once more.

“Don’t blame yourself, San. Please,” Mingi encouraged after escorting him home.

San let out a broken laugh, more tears spilling down his cheeks. “How can I not...? I took everyone there...I...mom and dad were right. I’m just...I should just sell my Cormorant and stop being so...so...”

“No,” Mingi gripped his shoulders tight enough that San flinched. “Your Cormorant was what saved _us_. Your ability to drive in such conditions – through boulder fields and across valleys and hills – if it had just been me, I would be dead. You saved my life, San. You’re more than those stupid stunt driving charges. Understand...?”

San sniffled, and nodded his head.

“I...I should’ve just left you alone,” Mingi laughed brokenly and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have encouraged you to give a statement. It would’ve been better, huh?”

San sniffled and shook his head. “No. You’re just doing your job. I was snooping.”

Mingi dug into his pocket for his hand terminal. A number appeared and he held it out towards San.

“This is my personal number. If you need anything, I want you to contact me. Don’t hesitate, okay?”

San sniffled, pulling out his own terminal to scan the number into his phone. “Y-Yeah. Do you...get time off now?”

“Hell no,” Mingi grimaced. “They want me back at the station tomorrow morning. We found what we’re looking for, and now there’s hell to pay. I’m a key witness now, and probably going to be grilled for another three hours, especially since I shot the gun.

“You, though...you try to rest. Take a shower. If you’ve got cold medicine in your cupboard, take it. It’ll knock you out for a few hours.”

San sniffled and nodded his head. Mingi pulled him in for another hug, squeezing him tightly. _Thank you,_ he wanted to say, but he didn’t know how to say it properly. 

“Go on, then,” San nudged him away, putting on a brave face. “You’ve done your job. I’m going to shower.”

Mingi nodded. “Call me later, okay?”

“Yeah.”

Mingi took the tram home, wondering what it was like to live in a world where you weren’t getting shot at; wondering what it was like to live without being aware of your own mortality. Once upon a time, Mingi knew. But now, after coming so close to death, he knew he would count every last breath he would take.

\--

Chief Kang was still at Marineris station when Mingi arrived the next morning. He looked up at him tiredly before massaging his forehead. The conference room was already half-full of people he’d never worked with, but Mingi was starting to get used to seeing these faces. There were a few unfamiliar ones, but Mingi guessed they were all there for the same reason – they were all part of the operation hellbent on tracking down the pirates.

“Your witness paid off, Officer Song,” Chief Kang said, folding his hands in front of him. “But it cost us a lot.”

“I know, sir,” Mingi said. “I’m...so sorry for the loss.”

Chief Kang bowed his head. “Chief Han is on his way with someone. You’re new to this operation; your name was only added three days ago, apparently. How much have you been briefed on?”

Mingi hesitated before answering, explaining what Chief Han had told him regarding the pirate who had turned himself in, and the information he’d received from San. He gave further details on how he’d met San, and how he’d simply slipped deeper into the operation without realizing what he was getting in to.

Before he could properly finish explaining the circumstances leading to him being promoted onto the team, a knock sounded on the door. Chief Han pushed the door open to admit a man with an outgrown military buzz cut and a harried expression. Behind him was Detective Park, who pushed the door shut behind them and gestured for the new man to take a seat.

Chief Kang met the man’s eyes, and Mingi faintly thought that if looks could kill, he would be more than dead. Yet, the man didn’t flinch. The man didn’t even cross his arms; he simply laid them on the table and leaned towards Chief Kang.

“Since you’re here too, do _you_ want to explain why I’m here?” He demanded, not too kindly. “I already gave my statements and told you everything I know.”

“Six police officers were killed investigating an area near Noctis Labyrinthus,” Chief Kang replied. 

Mingi watched the man’s eyes soften, his eyebrows raising in concern. The expression was gone a moment later.

“Now,” Chief Kang leaned over the table, mirroring the gesture of the other man. “You have some explaining to do, Kim Hongjoong.”

**Author's Note:**

> On Worldbuilding:  
The dome cities are named after geographical locations on Mars. Marineris is located north of Valles Marineris (otherwise known as the Mariner Valley) near the western end, and the nearby sister city is Noctis, located north of Noctis Labyrinthus and to the west of Marineris. Olympus is of course located near Olympus Mons, and Tharsis is located between the Tharsis bulge (a volcanic chain) and the much larger Olympus Mons.


End file.
